Some people have it worse

Nothing like the entitled Americans complaining while talking on their $1000 iPhones and their designer jeans about living in America. Having a President like Trump must make things so hard for you.
- Imagine not being able to enjoy your avocado sandwich for breakfast anymore due to import tariffs! The US is literally experiencing a famine!

Thank on your knees to fate that you weren’t born in Egypt
There’s no worse cesspit on earth that isn’t a warzone
Even India is more civilised and even nice folks in comparison
Friend of my friend once said that staying there she will either kill herself, get r**** or join hamas and she eventually joined hamas so yeah
- You gotta remember a lot of these countries work with the United States directly and the United States props up kingdoms. We are a imperialist empire and what you went through in Egypt or whoever is a direct result from American interference and imperialism. We are moving away from our soft power and we're going to our wakadoo burger king Hard power, a very clumsy club of buffoons. It is some of these Arab countries that work directly with the United States, that go out and kill American citizens when they're abroad. Along with the Israelis. Some of these Muslim kingdoms and Israel are like peas and carrots. For instance, Saudi Arabia had connections with the terrorist attack that was allowed to push us into a 20 year War for absolutely fucking nothing.. I'm so fucking amazed that people haven't put all this shit together, especially with the whole shit that's going on in the terrorist state of Israel. The Cold War Never ended.. Communism's dead and all we have is capitalist countries fighting amongst each other and the working class getting crushed under the weight. The era that we lived in was the Neo-liberal order, which is coming to an end. Neo-liberalism was a way to put all the wars on pause. What you're seeing in America is liberalism, the pressure valve of capitalism, which was always a bound to blow. Fail and give way to right-wing populism, which leads to fascism, if unchecked. You'll see in a lot of countries, split between two parties eventually. In general, global voter turnout is at an all-time low because people are starting to wake up to the fact that our supposed democracies are nothing but a ruse. Capitalism will set the world on fire and end all human life. Men will become slaves and women will be barefoot and pregnant. I've even listened to CIA analyst talk about how the United States is no longer a democracy. I believe it never was, really. But even they are acknowledging. Egypt warned Israel that Hamas was going to attack. They wanted them to attack, so they could manage perception and commit their genocide. You ain't full of nobody anymore, bud. All these people that go along with this propaganda, they don't realize that there's going to be a boomerang coming right the fuck back and smacking them in the face. The future that these capitalists have planned for you is a future with no autonomy, no prospects, and just more and more work. The United States is no longer going to take care of itself. And the rich people are just going to suck us dry. Where I live there are literal Hooverville's. Work will set you free. Welcome to the new Dark Ages.
  
  Did you take your medicine
- My friend is from Egypt and he says the same but I have no idea what exactly is there that is so bad. Can I elaborate.
  
  I've been to Egypt several times, and sometimes I've stayed with people who have moved there.
  The impression I get is that there very few ways for people born there to raise themselves up above what I call "The Hustle". There's a state of being where the key to survival is extracting money out of everyone you meet. By fair means or foul, you must make money.
  It can be making sure every person that walks into your shop buys something. It can be being a kerb crawling tuk tuk driver pestering walkers by. It can be thieving. It can be taking bribes in local government. Everybody is on the hustle. You can't afford to trust people because they'll take any advantage they can. It's a permanent state of stress and fear.
  ...and then there are the immigrant whales that move there, buy a big house on the coast and exploit the locals by flashing the cash.
  All of that said, when people do manage to find something stable, they're a great people, but there are so few decent ways to make enough money.
  
  Mentality is just merciless and cruel. Years of generational human abuse. Abused become abusers. Corruption, nepotism, patriarchy. On Egypt Facebook your feed is full of videos of animal abuse and laughing smileys in comments. It’s a dark place
- Using 'civilized' in this context evokes a bit too much Western colonial brain rot for my tastes.
  India and Egypt are two very different countries geographically, culturally and politically.
  India has its own problems with Hindu fascism.

I’ve never understood the argument that you shouldn’t complain about the environment you interact with because other people interact with worse environments.
Like, okay, that’s good to keep in mind with respect to privilege and assumptions and such, but like…
I can’t deliver a first-hand account of someone else’s life, and I can’t identify the possible solutions to their problems as well as I can for my own — let alone access their world as well as my own, to try to fix some of the problems.
I think on some level the people who say “focus on those other people’s problems” know that those other problems are less accessible.
It’s not that they want you to do better activism. It’s that they want you to do none.
- It's basically whataboutism
- I’ve never understood the argument that you shouldn’t complain about the environment you interact with because other people interact with worse environments.
  I call this the "children of Africa" -argument. Basically, it's an argument that you can never complain about anything or do anything to better something, because "some kids are starving in Africa"; someone always has it worse. It's purpose is to belittle and brush aside either the problem worded out or the person saying it (or both).
- i think the joke here is that a lot of people who come across this do live in America and it implies we all pity them

Actually fr! Studied a year there and I had no driver license back then… Which was fuckin painful as there was little to no other infrastructure! It was also fun to start uni with a 2 hour consultation about school shootings…
But the worst thing? They fucken start every conversation with a ‘how are you’ and look at you like you are boinkers if you say anything aside from ‘good’! Well I am not fuckin good at most times…
Lived in multiple eu countries as a contrast and its incomparably worse, while there is an amount of money I would go back temporarily but I would never settle down there
- Wait, so y'all don't have to lie and tell people you're doing good? This is an American thing?
  
  Yeah pretty much. Most of us don’t even ask.
  
  Yeah...
  I am an American but have had a lot of friends from all over the world.
  We are kind of exceptional in the extent of normalized, utterly disingenuous 'standard social interactions and phrases' that we use.
  We talk like NPCs using throwaway, canned dialogue lines, and if we don't do NPC talk, well then that is actually viewed as antisocial...
  Even though basically everyone else in the world would view this all as the opposite, inverted. Such forced bullshit conversations are generally viewed as bullshit and disingenuous.
  Land of the individual!...
  So long as you conform to various social norms that are so routine most of us don't ever even stop to question their prevalence or function.
  
  Ehhhhh, this is not standard in all places. If someone asks me how I am I will answer honestly but vaguely. "Living the dream, I've been better, meh, good, pretty good." It's common for other people to answer the same way, too. The part that's not as socially acceptable is to go into detail about it if you don't know the people well/people don't have follow up questions about it.
  
  Hell that's regional even in the US. Most social interactions in the PNW used "What's up!" in whatever variation to mean "Hi!" and "How's it going/are you doing?" meant "Tell new how you're feeling or how your day/task is progressing“. Honest answers were quite normal. The only people who were bothered were the bourgie types, and fuck 'em in any case.
  We also just didn't talk to unfamiliar people outside of social spaces if it could be helped.
  
  Why would you do that ngl. If someone asks how I am, of course I tell the truth. If they don't want to know, they shouldn't have asked.
  
  Hell I live in an area that asks it as a greeting and I don't lie. Sometimes I sugarcoat it with "could be better" but like, no one ever makes me feel like a dumbass for being honest.
- I have a coworker who greets me with "Hi, what's up? How's it going?" and then just continue walking without expecting an answer. It's such a pet peeve of mine, lol. We're not Americans, we live in Europe, and this person is definitely an exception, but it still catches me off guard every single time.
- You see, "how are you?" Isn't a genuine quotation, it's just a way of saying "hello" and feigning interest in someone's well-being. In all actual fact, nobody gives a shit.
  Just say "fine" and move on.
  
  I say “doing alright, how about you”l and that usually covers it
  
  This is so strange of you start to think about it: A whole country decided to ask about your feelings, which is a super deep question. But it doesn't accept anything other than "fine". Like, you are not greeting someone by wishing them well, or peace or welcoming them, but by demanding a fixed fake answer that everything is offs. It makes the one who greets look like they care. But they usually do not. So every conversation has to start with a lie by the person who was greeted first.
  
  So you have to answer it? To what sort of languical constructs are you expected to answer?
- "How are you?" is a greeting, not a question.
  ...Unless it's from a close friend.
  
  In the US. That's the point. If I get asked that, the other person generally has some degree of interest in my genuine answer
  
  Are you supposed to answer it? Yes? So its a question wowsies…
  
  Well then the question mark is a lie
- I've even seen it a lot that people don't even reply to "how are you", they just start talking about something else. So weird...
  
  They interpreted it as [acknowledgement that they are aware of your presence], which it most likely is.

Am I allowed to complain since I live in the USA ?
- Do what I do. Grit your teeth and avoid the headlines. Check in daily but don't get sucked in. Check the uplifting news to feel better.
- No. You and your fellow citizens voted for this.
  
  I voted Harris so no I didnt vote for this.
  
  no, not all of us did. it just so happens that morons yell the loudest
  
  You dug your bed, now lie in it ?
  
  Assuming you meant "voted":
  No, I and many others didn't, actually, maybe learn how our voting system works before throwing gover half the country into a bus with less than half the country

It's good to put your own problems into perspective sometimes.

If you think the USA's domestic policy is terrible and social murder, wait till you find out about its foreign policies. They do social murder too, but regular murder, mass murder, and terrorism sponsored by the richest nation are also on the table.

We are so fucked.

If enough locals had their way, we would return to an independent republic

That gun country?
- The soon to be Chinese subsidiary.
- Good point. There can't be anyone left alive by now.
  
  Nobody is except one person. It's Mr Rogers in a blood stained sweater.

From farther back that I care to remember
- Mom has more fingers than daughter? This just feels like AI slop
  
  The weird sepia tone and rigid composition is a pretty solid indicator of AI generation (no idea which model[s] though)
  
  Are you not human? Children don't grow all their fingers until they're around 16. Maybe do some research next time, gleepglorp.
  
  Both of them staring blankly ahead's a big tell, too.
  
  You do know that fingers can obscure other fingers from certain angles, right?
  Or do you think the mom has 5 fingers on one hand and only 4 on the other?
  
  I don't need these clues like the number of fingers anymore, just look at how soulless that image looks. This is either AI or an artist that lost their will to live.
  
  Yeah, OK. I never said it wasn’t 🤷

Thoughts and prayers

So this is Christmas
Camera slowly pans across various shots of Americans
And what have you done?
1 800 number comes up on the screen for donations

I hope they find a cure lol (lots of love)

got license to complain then

sigh. why have a reddit alternative if its just the same as reddit.
- It's not the same, you don't get banned for mentioning Luigi or criticizing Musk here
  
  You would never get banned for. Criticizing musk or trump on reddit either.
- I mean, you joined and commented on world.
  
  Sorry, I'm new to lemmy. But that explains a few things, thankd. So is there different versions, and is .world left leaning? Do you know if there are any center leaning, or even slightly right leaning versions of lemmy then? Cheers.

Hi America, the people around the world living through famines, wars and genocides would like to have a quiet word with you.
- More people are food insecure in America than in Ethiopia in current year. More people are imprisoned and enslaved in the US per capita than the population of uighurs internationally or in xinjiang, while having incomprably worse prison conditions. Swat kills more kids than the average army at war.
  And that's the official statistics that the government openly publishes, not including the tens of millions of undocumented people and cases of violence and imprisonment which fall through the laughably, arguably purposefully large cracks in us internal data collection.
- Heya were currently living through two homegrown genocides while our government perpetuates even more overseas. Help.
- Oh I'm fairly confident that we'll see our famine and genocide too. War? Idk there ain't no war but class war, so we see plenty of war, just one side is winning.